Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 06:29:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Palazzo <apalazzo198@yahoo.com>
Subject: vintage thrills  6..Hot Shows

The Shows That Really Show

In addition to gay porn films, I became an avid viewer of gay live
performances.  In the early 1970s, New York had a few male strip shows.
One was at the Tom Cat Theater in the Times Square area of Manhattan.  This
was the sleazy old Times Square, not today's cleaned up Disney Square.

Male strippers usually appeared several times a day in between gay hardcore
film showings.  As somewhat of a regular, I became quite familiar with
several of the performers. The performances were usually uninspired, just
young guys getting up on stage, and stripping to music.  Sometimes there
would be an attempt to dance to the music, sometimes just a slow sensual
strip.  Often, the pace was maddeningly slow.  But I kept going back.

In all of the shows the boys stripped at least to brief underwear, posing
straps or g strings.  As sex show codes were loosened, they stripped naked.
There would sometimes be increased enforcement of vice laws, and the g
strings would reappear for a while. Eventually, the strippers began to
touch themselves, and more.  At the Tom Cat there was one talented guy who
could suck himself, and that became the much anticipated climax of his
performance. But to get to the flesh and the sex often took a mind numbing
fifteen minutes or more per performer. With each song, some more clothes
would get removed, until typically by the third musical number, the boys
would be down to their birthday suits, or as bare as the law was currently
allowing.

At some straight theaters, a male-female duo act would perform between porn
films.  The highlight would be when the woman would drop to her knees as
the music built to a crescendo, and quickly remove the dick from her
partner's jock strap, and suck it for a half minute or so.  It was quick,
and poorly lighted, and the woman had her back to the audience, so it was
difficult to see much.  One day I decided to strategically seat myself up
front and to the side so that I could determine if the female dancer was
actually removing her partner's cock and putting it in her mouth.  Yep, she
was. Rumor was that many of the men who performed in these straight shows
were gay.

In the early years at the gay theaters, the boys never touched each other,
or even performed together.  By the late seventies and into the eighties
almost anything was permitted. There were frequent "duos" on stage, and
many theaters had a finale with six or more boys on stage, naked and hard.

Actual gay sex shows became available in the seventies in which two or more
guys touched and masturbated each other. A few daring theaters began to
have the guys get into heavier sex scenes like sucking each other, and I
even remember viewing a mid-afternoon fuck on a fully lighted Manhattan
stage.

A few of the theaters encouraged audience participation.  By tipping the
dancers, you could get at least a grope and often much more. One notorious
"club" had appearances by famous gay porn stars, who would do some dancing
on stage and then circulate among the audience, looking for tips.  It was
common for the dancers to put a foot up on the arm of your chair, lean
forward and silently invite you to suck their famous cock.  I didn't
because I was afraid of bringing disease home to my wife, but many- maybe
most- did.  After the show, when the films were on, the live performers
would often hang out around the theater, and try to earn some extra money
in the dark corners and secret nooks and cubbyholes that were everywhere,
-- downstairs, upstairs, even backstage.

These were performances in movie theaters.  In bars, even wilder shows
could be seen late at night or in the early morning hours.  Sex bars had
shows of guys whipping each other and even fist fucking. Some back room
bars even had facilities (e.g. bathtub) for guys to piss on each
other. Perhaps the most famous was the Mine Shaft, down in Greenwich
Village, where reportedly just about anything went on. I have read, and
heard from reliable sources, that many famous celebrities went slumming to
clubs like the Mine Shaft, transported by limosines at 3a.m. For a long
time I felt that my rather conventional lifestyle was depriving me of all
kinds of excitement, such as bars like the Ramrod and the Mine Shaft could
provide.  Looking back now, I know that I didn't really miss out on
anything much.  The many reports about places I never made it to were
probably more exciting than the actual experience.  And I did manage to
sample enough personally to give me a pretty good taste of New York's
sleaziest era.


As the years and decades passed, there were periods of tightened
enforcement of vice rules, followed by loosened enforcement, followed again
by a return to stricter standards.  As I write this we are in a more
conservative and stricter enforcement period in New York City.